


Crushed Blacks

by lordofthedreadfort



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Extremely Dubious Consent, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Sleep Sex, Sleepwalking, eroticised manipulation, everyone's favourite sort, sweet rib-cracking fantasies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-10-13
Packaged: 2019-06-27 11:51:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15684882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordofthedreadfort/pseuds/lordofthedreadfort
Summary: With reality splitting around him, Will knows even his sleeping hours are no longer safe. But if he can't trust himself, he can trust Hannibal.Hannibal discovers he can make use of Will's sleep-walking episodes in more ways than he had originally anticipated.Set in the second half of S1.





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [threewick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/threewick/gifts).



When Will comes back to himself, he is lost.

He’s walking along the side of an empty road. The ground gleams with scattered frost like broken glass; he is rigid and damp with the cold, his nose burning at the tip, his fingers stiff and reddened as he flexes them. Around him, there’s mostly shadow disrupted every so often by a smear of orange fluorescence.

He touches the side of his face, his mouth, as if to check everything is still there. Panic whines in the back of his head like a beaten dog; his head is full of sound, blood rushing, as he grinds his teeth and tries to place himself in reality.

He had been at home – sheltered in the lit curve of his lighthouse home, brushing his teeth, staring blankly at his reflection in the mirror as the dogs had paced in the backdrop. He remembers these noises because they had comforted him. He tries to recall them now but they splinter and crack beneath the weight of his desperation – instead, he recalls the noises that have been following him for the past weeks, the whimpers of wounded animals which had cut through him so forcibly he had cracked half of his fireplace apart before Alana’s appalled courtesy had interrupted him.

The whiplash of the memory is nearly enough to stop him in place.

He carries on, gritting his teeth harder until his jaw aches with the pressure. The road is the same, front and back – he doesn’t want to retrace his lost steps and encounter the surroundings as if for the first time. So he moves ahead.

He had been at home. In his bathroom. Looking down at himself, he is still wearing the same clothes: a soft, greyish t-shirt, boxers, socks now smeared with dirt and gravel. His legs seem unreal as he walks.

When Will lifts his head, he spots the splintered bone of the moon curved in the distance.

He tries to exhale and the breath comes out thick and damp like a sob. His feet hurt. The previous days are flickering through his head like a candlewick caught in a storm – kissing Alana in the lecture theatre, the sticky sweetness of Hannibal’s dessert congealing with his confession, Tobias Budge’s victims lying mangled and bloodied in his shop. Hannibal’s hair swept in uncharacteristic disarray, the corner of his mouth bloodied, his office crowded and confused with the residue of violence.

‘I appreciate the company.’ Hannibal’s words. They bleed now into the angry sound of Will’s head.

Light from ahead. Will reels, nearly loses his footing on the side of the road. Feels drunk with the intensity of the beam, as if he’s under interrogation. Closer, he realises they are headlights flashing at him. His mouth still tastes a little like toothpaste and he tries to work out how much time has been blotted and smeared, squinting in irritation at the light ahead – maybe an hour, at most. He feels like he’s been walking for a month.

The car rolls to a halt, brakes jerking. Will keeps walking. The flash of the headlights has blinded him momentarily.

‘Will?’

He keeps walking. The sky ahead looks angry and bruised.

‘Will? Can you hear me? – Will?’

‘I can hear you,’ he mutters to himself, his voice curbed and shorn. And then: ‘...Hannibal?’

When Will turns around, incredulous, certain his mind has snapped, Hannibal has caught up with him. He looks warm and poised in a long, well-tailored coat, no longer unsettled by the violence of Tobias’ death; he looks exactly as he would if Will were imagining him.

Will huffs out a breath. It billows in the air before him.

‘What are you doing here?’ he asks before he can stop himself. He sounds belligerent and bad-tempered; he feels as if he has been caught doing something bad, and perhaps he has.

Hannibal’s expression flickers with indecipherable emotion before flattening once more with the low light of the road.

‘I came looking for you. I see you had the same instinct. How fortuitous. Do you want to get in the car?’

‘I want to go home.’

‘I’d prefer it if you came back with me.’

‘My dogs—’

‘Will be fine for the night. You returning back now will only upset then. I’ll have Alana check on them in the morning.’

Will swallows against the burn of emotion at the back of his throat, finally feeling the cold seep through the material of his t-shirt. Hannibal is considering him with a familiar tilt to his head, as if he can see the fight draining out of Will, as if he is admiring the exit wound of his sudden appearance.

‘Don’t tell Alana why I’m not at home.’

‘Okay.’

‘I don’t want to talk now.’

‘That’s fine.’

Will yanks open the car door.

The air inside the car is choked with heat. It burns against his cheeks as he sits in the passenger seat, thinking sullenly and absurdly of Alana. _See_? he wants to tell her, his face hot with frustration, the word floating to the forefront of his mind with the characteristic scrape of Hobb’s whisper, _I’m unstable with or without you. All I did was kiss you._ He grinds his teeth against the rush of humiliation as Hannibal slides into the front seat, and the pain keeps him awake all through the quiet of the car journey.

 

Walking into Hannibal’s home is like being submerged in a cool body of water. Will is alert, briefly, his skin humming with renewed sensation after the long drive and the winter chill and the frantic noise reverberating around Will’s skull as if a bird was trapped inside his head. There are no bad memories in Hannibal’s house – no more than the flush of embarrassment he had felt telling Hannibal all about Alana. But even his humiliation seems something more when it is shaped as an offering to Hannibal.

Still, Hannibal seems maddeningly uninterested in their coincidental meeting on the side of the road. He sits Will down, stokes the fire, then carefully peels away his own layers as if he has returned from a brisk and short-lived shopping trip, hanging his coat, unwinding the scarf from around his neck, turning the lights on until their sleepy glow blurs in the periphery of Will’s vision.

After an age of careful preparation, Hannibal sits opposite Will, his expression narrowed to an arrow-point. Will picks idly at a callous on his palm and tries to decide how he should be feeling. But when he glances at Hannibal, all he can think of is the way he had looked in the wake of Tobias Budge’s death, that streak of blood at his chin, his shirt cuffs loosened.

Will knows as soon as he shatters the silence that he has fallen into Hannibal’s trap. He’s too tired to care.

‘I think I lost time again. No, not think – I know I did. I was at home, and then... and then I wasn’t any more.’ A bubble of hysteria threatens to rise within him until he inhales sharply to cut it off at the source. When he speaks again, his voice is deliberately, artificially steady. ‘None of this feels right. I’ve never been like this before.’

‘You don’t need to defend yourself to me,’ Hannibal says, his voice calm and still as an undisturbed body of water. Will closes his eyes; imagines sinking into it.

‘I’m not. Just... thinking aloud.’

‘I wasn’t checking up on you, if that’s what you are concerned about. I came for a much more selfish reason, in fact. What happened with Tobias... I can admit it has preoccupied me. I thought to talk it over with you. You know what it is like, after all. The unreality of murder.’

‘You were defending yourself.’ Will’s voice sounds beaten in, and strange in his own ears, as if distorted by his underwater imagination. ‘It’s not the same.’

‘You were defending Abigail. And you succeeded. At any rate, I do not think this is a conversation we should be having now.’ Hannibal stands, puncturing the conversation with the finality of his movement. ‘I’ll show you to your room. It’s not far from mine – I’m a light sleeper, so you will be perfectly safe here. We can talk in the morning, when you are well. Or not, if you would prefer.’

Will worries unspoken words between his teeth.

‘Thanks,’ he settles on finally, stiffly. He doesn’t look at Hannibal as he follows him up the stairs. Hannibal’s words had sent a feverish shiver running through him, and the feeling lingers deep in the marrow of his bones as he presses his face into the pillow and feels the mattress shift and dip beneath his weight. He can’t imagine ever feeling safe whilst in his own body. In his own traitorous head.

 

Hannibal remains awake long after Will retires to bed.

He is usually calm and centred, but Will’s appearance on the side of the road caught him by surprise. It is not the first time Will has surprised him – their growing relationship has been pockmarked with these unexpected pleasures, but tonight more than most. He sits at his desk and relives the memory, careful not to over-expose it in case it might fade and wear with his recollection – but it gleams with fresh newness as he thinks of it now, the way he had been dwelling on Will and his sly, clever escape from Tobias Budge and then had seen him emerge out of the roadside gloom, pale and dazed in the tentative moonlight. An offering.

The evening thickens into pure night around him. He busies himself with correspondence, but his mind is elsewhere. He is toying with the flicker of warm pleasure he had felt when he had seen Will emerge with Jack through his office door in the wake of Tobias’ demise, the way one toys with a loose tooth, prodding it as if its ache might be mastered. He had not expected to be so pleased.

A noise from a distance – from the guest room. Perhaps a crash. Hannibal straightens his posture and considers the noise for a moment, his mouth threatening to ease into a smile. Another noise, then the creak of the door. Hannibal carefully finishes signing the document he is reading, and moves towards the hallway.

When he glances out into the corridor, he is not surprised to find Will moving towards him. Hannibal pauses to weigh his words before he speaks, to pantomime confusion, but before his thoughts can coalesce he looks again at the ungraceful tilt of Will’s walk, the slack give of his expression, and knows with a rush of sudden clarity that Will is still asleep.

Hannibal’s mind works very quickly in the wake of this new knowledge.

‘Will?’ he says finally, his voice careful. He moves towards Will with a practiced slowness.

Will shivers, boyish and lost in the long expanse of the hallway. He rocks to a halt and stares so disarmingly at Hannibal that Hannibal almost doubts his instincts, almost allows himself to wonder if Will is awake after all.

‘Doctor Lecter.’

Interesting. Will is defenceless in all the ways that count - his mind having loosened itself like an extraneous layer, abandoning him to the idle movements of his body - and yet still he scrambles for a barrier. Hannibal savours the honorific.

‘What are you doing?’

‘You were in my head.’

‘I’m glad to hear it.’

‘Wanted to check… if you were still here. Outside. Of my head.’

Hannibal has stilled in front of Will now. He angles his head to consider Will, appraising him; Will’s voice is lazy and laboured, as if the words are very heavy in his mouth, and up close his eyes are almost consumed by the colour of his pupils.

‘I’m very real,’ Hannibal tells him conspiratorially.

Will’s mouth trembles, momentarily, the deliberate curve of his lips shaping around unconscious thoughts. And then, dreamlike, enraptured, he reaches out to touch at the side of Hannibal’s face.

There is no way that the Will of Hannibal's daylight hours would touch him so willingly, so boldly, his palm dragging along the side of Hannibal's face with thoughtless longing. And yet here he is, his mouth open and begging, his eyes clouded with sleep. Hannibal knows better than to waste an opportunity that has been so beautifully presented to him. And he has dreamed about how Will might taste from the moment he had met him in Jack's office.

He shakes himself free of Will's touch; grips him hard by the chin, angling his face to suit Hannibal's needs. If Will were to wake up, this would be the moment, Hannibal's hand hard and demanding at his jaw, but he is soon satisfied that Will's unconsciousness runs thick and deep.

He does not have much time. But he has enough.

Hannibal kisses Will, his thumb tracing the slant of Will's cheekbone as their mouths press hard together. Will lets out a soft breath and his mouth opens further against Hannibal's like a slowly unfurling flower - when Hannibal deepens the kiss, his tongue rolling against Will's, the heavy, damp heat of Will's fever sinks through him.

He imagines prising apart Will's skull like the hard casing of a shell; the physicality of it, the shift and release of the plates to reveal the vulnerable meat simmering within. Thinks of sinking his fingers into it. Tasting the violent streak of Will's imagination as he bites down, hard, on his torturous brain. He will know him then, right at the moment of destruction.

He pulls back sharply, his teeth dragging across Will’s lower lip. The sensation ripples between them. When he walks back towards his bedroom, he hears Will following him, quiet and devotional.

The bedroom is charged with Will’s presence: the air thicker, the lights brighter, the shadows denser. Hannibal’s skin prickles with anticipation as he closes the door behind the both of them and watches, intrigued, as Will moves boldly into the centre of the room like he belongs there. Something has been released in Will, some predator instinct, the same innate violence that had thrummed through Abigail as she had gutted Nicholas Boyle.

And yet she was at Hannibal’s mercy, in the end. Just as Will is now.

'What do you want, Will?' he asks kindly, loosening his shirt collar. The prospect of gaining a lurid sort of consent from Will in this state threatens, momentarily, to upend his composure.

Will sways a little in place. He looks rudely vulnerable in the nighttime glow of the room, barefoot and unaware, rumpled with sleep. It is only now that Hannibal notices the imprint of the pillow crease against the side of his face - a sign he had slept hard and fast, despite the unfamiliarity of Hannibal's house.

'I want to keep you company,' he says finally. The words slur together.

Hannibal's answering smile is sharp with pleasure.

He strides once more towards Will, erasing the distance between them with a kiss that bruises and stings. Will is unresponsive at first but before long he counters with a translucent echo of Hannibal’s kiss, his lips slow and artless against Hannibal’s, his tongue warm and wet, and when Hannibal pulls him flush against his front Will responds with kindling enthusiasm until they are pressing together at their hips, their knees, their chests.

To have Will so close, so eager, after the tentative game they have been playing for the past months is intoxicating. It seems a cheat, in a way, to have it parcelled so neatly like this, and yet Hannibal is equally aware of how imperfect the encounter is, how marred by time and circumstance.

He pulls back with a breathless noise. Will’s mouth is tender and red and wet with the kiss; Hannibal considers it with approval as he pushes Will down onto the bed, rucking the material of his t-shirt up as he moves with him, his hands exploring the exposed slope of Will’s chest, noting every ridge of scar, every mark, as the warmth floods through Hannibal’s palms.

Will shivers with the touch, as if Hannibal’s hands are coaxing the winter cold out of his bones.

Hannibal smooths his palms over Will’s ribs, his thumbs tracing the thin shell of each curve as if he is pricing something rare and valuable. When Will’s breath hitches audibly, Hannibal presses harder, his thumbs grinding bruises into Will’s skeleton, and imagines the sweet release of cracking him open, of licking a stripe up his sternum and biting at the filmy material of his throat. Smearing Will’s pulp over himself until his teeth are red. Of baring Will to the light, all the hidden bruises Hannibal has pressed into his insides.

His palms drag lower, across the heat of Will’s stomach, as Hannibal visualises the placement of his organs. And then lower still, dragging across the cheap material of Will’s boxers, cupping him thoughtfully. Will’s expression is usually defensive and shuttered, but here, now, everything is open and exposed for Hannibal, every flicker of disorientated pleasure, every pulse of desire.

He circles his thumb against Will through the material of his underwear, his expression relaxing with the hint of pleasure as Will grows hard beneath his touch. Will seems very easy to please in this regard, and very difficult in all others - when Hannibal raises himself above Will, propping himself up with his hands splayed at either side of Will's head, Will looks flushed with his own arousal, his hair dark against the light of the pillow, his mouth a waxen smear of red, his pupils blown and unseeing.

‘Hannibal...’ Doctor Lecter no longer. A thrill of triumph runs down Hannibal’s spine.

He leans down, very carefully, holding his composure like a balanced weight, and inhales the deep, heady scent of Will's fever, his nose pressed into the hollow of Will's neck. Arousal stirs like a long dead thing from within him.

Will's hands slide clumsily against Hannibal, reacting to his new presence. One hand grips at the back of Hannibal's head, sifting through the hair at the nape of his neck, the other against his back. He bucks up, pressing himself flush against Hannibal.

Hannibal responds in kind, grinding meanly against Will with a deliberate roll of his hips until Will arches beneath him, helplessly, instinctively, his expression feral with vulnerability. His grip tightens in Hannibal’s hair. Hannibal presses the flat of his tongue to the jut of Will’s collarbone, tasting his salt, and then pulls away in one fluid motion before he forgets himself and leaves a mark.

‘Not tonight,’ he says, half to himself, half for Will’s unknowing benefit.

For the first time since he’s entered the room, Will stirs with rebellious animation, whining low in the back of his throat as he slides his own hand down towards his cock.

‘No,’ Hannibal says smoothly, leaning over to grasp Will by the wrist. ‘Not tonight.’

Will stares up at him, transfixed, breathing heavily. It is the only sound in the room. Hannibal shifts his grip on Will’s wrist, running the pad of his thumb along Will’s pulse point with a deceptive tenderness.

‘On your knees.’

Will watches Hannibal, his mouth slackening with vacant interest, before sliding off the bed and dropping hard to his knees. So lovely and compliant. Arousal stirs again in Hannibal’s gut at the sight: Will looking up through his eyelashes, his eyes glazed over, his hair slicked across his forehead in loose curls, his lips parted and trusting. His face is flushed hot and young with the pressure of refused satisfaction.

Hannibal’s hands are quick and practiced at his belt. He unzips his trousers, steps out of them; he is restless with desire but his heartbeat remains slow and steady as he watches Will watching him. Hannibal could do anything to him in this moment. Anything at all.

Will’s expression seems to falter, as if he is falling back into a deeper sleep.

Anything at all.

Hannibal is already half-hard as he pulls his cock from his underwear. He runs the thumb of his free hand along the curve of Will’s mouth, pressing against the swell of his lower lip before easing his mouth open and sliding himself in with a fluid thrust of his hips.

Will’s mouth is slack and inviting against him, offering no resistance as Hannibal presses himself between his lips. But he makes an appreciative sound – slurred and melted with the effects of his unconsciousness and the weight of Hannibal in his mouth – and the hum of his exhale ghosts across Hannibal’s cock. His eyes are vacant – heavy-lidded, purpled around the edges, sliding out of focus as Hannibal begins to move against Will’s mouth with a singular focus.

Hannibal releases an exhale, the breath hooking deep within his chest as he fucks into Will’s mouth, gripping the back of Will’s head with a twist of his fingers. Will is compliant but mostly still, his tongue flat and wet against Hannibal’s length, his mouth relaxing to accommodate the force of Hannibal’s movements.

Hannibal thrusts deeper with a snap of his hips.

Will makes a strangled noise and dips his head, saliva dripping onto the floor. His mouth is slick and hot against Hannibal’s cock and Hannibal keeps his eyes firmly focused on the dense knot of Will’s curls as he works himself against Will’s mouth. The rhythm is hard and brusque - next time, Hannibal will ease it out, will give himself over to the lovely wet of Will’s mouth, the tentative slide of his tongue, the muffled noises he is making at the very back of his throat. But he must be careful for now. And he knows he can be.

He is repeating the sound of Will’s wet, spluttered choke in his head, trying to angle himself within Will to produce it again, trying to angle Will’s head with a punishing directive, thrusting with deeper purpose.

Arousal is burning deep in his gut, rising with tidal pressure.

Will chokes again against the head of Hannibal’s cock and Hannibal chases the noise all the way to his climax.

There is a hollow ringing in his ears in the aftermath. Hannibal allows himself a brief moment of stillness, tipping his head back, breathing through the tremors of his orgasm as he remains in Will’s mouth. He considers the sensation from each angle; studies it with forensic detail. And then he withdraws and wipes himself clean

Will’s mouth is smeared with saliva and the residue of Hannibal’s orgasm. It is the most beautiful thing Hannibal has seen in a long while, and for a moment, just a moment, he wants desperately to preserve it in the chilled casing of death.

Instead, he grabs his trousers from the floor and folds them with neat precision. He removes his shirt with a similar composure, smoothing it and hanging it, before pulling on a robe as if he has been disturbed from his sleep.

Will staggers to his feet, thoughtlessly wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand, looking disorientated and hazy.

‘Thank you for keeping me company,’ Hannibal tells him with a private quirk of his mouth. Will looks at him steadily. He looks half-wrecked, even without having climaxed himself, his mouth tender and painful, his cheeks lurid with high colour, his chin wet. Hannibal wishes Jack could see Will as he is seeing him now. He wishes they all could. But it is better like this: better that this is for him only, a moment even Will has not intruded upon.

A sepulchral silence fills the house as Hannibal leads Will back out into the hallway, retracing the steps from before.

Will stands idle and helpless in the corridor, his chin streaked with saliva, his mouth swollen and red in the half-light like a site of infection. Hannibal admires the view as a feeling of contentment sweeps through him. The possibilities stretch before him now – pressing Will’s face into the pillow, fucking into him from behind, touching him again and again until he is coaxed to climax, leaving the phantom pain of his presence so deep within Will it smarts and aches all throughout the next day without Will ever properly understanding what has happened.

Hannibal has never felt as alive as he does now, considering his future with Will Graham.

He smooths himself down one last time, tightening the knot on his robe, wiping at the corner of his mouth – and then he approaches Will as if advancing towards a spooked animal. His hands are very gentle as they rest at either side of Will’s face, his thumbs brushing against the bruise-soft skin beneath Will’s eyes.

‘Will? Can you hear me? You’re sleep-walking Will, I need you to wake up.’

Will jolts awake as if struck.

His eyes slide in and out of focus for a handful of breaths as reality floods back in. Hannibal holds him still, watching the ripples of frantic emotion spread across Will’s face before he finally focuses on Hannibal and exhales. Hannibal’s chest flares with satisfaction.

‘Don’t panic, Will. You’re safe. You’re in my house – do you remember?’

‘Yes. I – I remember,’ Will manages, his voice thick with sleep.

‘Good. You didn’t get far, see? I heard you.’ He smooths the hair away from Will’s forehead in a practiced motion. Will looks pale and stricken in the quiet light of the hallway, his mouth moving soundlessly, but he remains still and calm in Hannibal’s grip. Just as calm as he had been as he sunk to his knees and parted his lips for Hannibal.

Hannibal wonders if Will can taste him still in his mouth. His cock throbs with the thought.

‘It’s still dark outside.’ He removes his hands from the side of Will’s face and feigns tiredness, rubbing at his face with his palm, watching Will from the corner of his eye. Will’s mouth is soft and vulnerable - Hannibal witnesses the exact moment it clamps tight with tension as Will realises, with a start, the urgency of his erection. ‘Go back to bed. Sleep-walking rarely happens more than once in a night.’

He glances up properly then; meets Will’s gaze head on. He can almost feel the recoil that runs through Will at the contact and has to resist the urge to splay the flat of his palm between Will’s shoulder blades and guide him back to bed. Next time, perhaps.

In the wake of Hannibal’s suggestion, there is quiet like a held breath. And then--

‘Night, Hannibal.’ Will’s voice is still half-slurred, his face newly flushed with embarrassment.

‘Good night, Will.’

Hannibal fights a smile as he returns to his room and finally, finally, slides beneath the covers. He falls asleep almost at once, sated, and satisfied. For now.

 

Hannibal rises early the next morning at his usual time. The house seems to hum with the knowledge of the previous evening - Hannibal toys with the urge to sit down at the harpsichord and compose, but instead he leaves a message on Alana’s voicemail and decides to prepare breakfast.

Will stumbles into the kitchen as the oil begins to spit in the pan.

‘Good morning, Will,’ Hannibal says without turning.

‘Morning,’ Will responds, his voice shorn with caution. When Hannibal turns towards him, he looks almost the same as he had last night, his clothes crumpled and marked with use, and yet he looks decidedly changed. The shutters back up. But not all the way.

‘I’m making breakfast. Sit down.’

Hannibal watches with mild patience as Will struggles with unspoken words, his jaw shifting as if weighed down by the effort. He wonders if the movement hurts him; if the bruise of Hannibal’s presence has sunk into the sleek bone of Will’s jawline.

Finally, Will pulls out a seat and sits, heavily. His jaw jumps, as if he is grinding his teeth, and when he speaks his voice sounds equally worn.

‘I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to you about Tobias. Last night.’

The direction of the conversation takes Hannibal momentarily by surprise. He frowns, hiding his expression beneath a veneer of concentration as he searches for plates.

‘There is no need to apologise. I’m glad we encountered each other, however coincidentally. Do you want to talk about it?’

‘Not really,’ Will responds, too quick.

Hannibal waits.

‘I don’t want to talk about it because I don’t know what to say. They’re my experiences, but they’re not. It feels like... like I don’t have any boundaries any more. Like they’ve all collapsed around me.’ Will exhales; a short, violent sound. ‘Everything is mixing together. I feel very blurry, around the edges.’

‘It’s natural to try and dissociate yourself from what’s inside when that is what you begin to fear,’ Hannibal responds. He glances away from Will to plate up their breakfast. ‘But you must resist that. It is at this time that it is most important to look within. To confront it. Know it.’

‘It sounds like you’re advocating more therapy,’ Will notes, a bite of irony in his voice. When Hannibal looks away from the plates, Will is fixing him with one of his sad smiles, the expression wilted at the edges.

‘I wasn’t aware that you were here in a therapeutic capacity.’ Hannibal moves towards the table; places one plate in front of Will with deliberate care, as if to punctuate his little joke. ‘I am not advocating more therapy, necessarily. But there is a lot to be said about the act of discussing your thoughts with a friend.’

He sits down opposite Will. Will stares at him as if caught by surprise, looking deceptively young and sleep-swept, his curls springing from his forehead. Hannibal remembers in a vivid spray of memory how Will had looked last night: half-conscious, desperate, twisted in Hannibal’s sheets, his cheeks fever-pink as Hannibal had touched him.

‘Eat,’ Hannibal orders smoothly when he senses Will is about to speak. There is a beat; then Will’s mouth twitches in the hint of submission and he picks up his fork.

They eat together in silence. Hannibal savours each bite; the taste is amplified by the sight of Will across from him, clearly plagued by the previous evening, the humiliation of starting awake confused and aroused with Hannibal before him.

When the plates are clean, Hannibal seizes his opportunity.

‘No matter what happens Will, you can always come to me when you need a reminder of who you are. I can give you definition again. Solidity. That is what you were looking for last night. Someone to contain you.’

‘Like a straitjacket,’ Will suggests, a challenging twist to his expression.

‘Like a skeleton,’ Hannibal corrects, and the phantom press of Will’s ribs vibrates through his thumbs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal has been a very significant part of my heart for years but only now have I plucked up the courage to write something for it. Now I've started I don't think I can stop. No other pairing lets me use such weird metaphors with such violent and wild abandon.
> 
> Please ignore my gratuitous abuse of American geography to suit the needs of this fic. 
> 
> Happy birthday to my fellow Hannibal devotee and my favourite overseas penpal, @threewick. Thank you for letting me save up the powdery residue of your talent and using it for this.


	2. Part Two

Will can’t stop thinking about that night at Hannibal’s home.

His memories are smeared with sleep and shame. The entire night narrows down to the vivid splash of sensation as he had jolted awake in Hannibal’s hallway, flushed and disorientated with traitorous arousal. He thinks about it again and again in the days following. The polite, gentle aversion of Hannibal’s gaze; the grounding weight of his hands at either side of Will’s face as he had hauled him back towards reality, steering him home like the lamplit interior of his house.

He prods his embarrassment like a bruise. Thinks about starting awake with his mouth dry and sore, his cock throbbing insistently, his mind sticky and useless with it. When he’s back in the relative familiarity of his house, he wanders restlessly for an hour followed by the uneasy whine of his dogs, and then hurriedly slides a hand inside his trousers before he can stop himself.

It’s what he had wanted that night, stumbling back into Hannibal’s guest room, bleary-eyed and unsteady. Instead he had laid on top of the bed – like a corpse – holding himself very still, every inch of his body alert to his arousal.

When he touches himself again at home, the memory of the previous night surges so strongly he’s aroused in no time. He bites down again on the inside of his cheek at the first flash of humiliation – and only when he tastes blood in his mouth as he bucks into his hand does it feel as though his shame has been purged. Temporarily.

He feels grateful, as well. Grateful to Hannibal for not telling Jack and Alana – grateful that he was there.

He sleeps hard and fast for the next two days, and when he wakes slick with sweat, his bed dripping, his hair damp, the wet outline of his body in the mattress only goes to show how little he moved in the night.

And then Jack calls.

 

 

The sea is winter glass, the breeze sharp and flinty against Will’s cheeks. Heaps of sand and snow everywhere. And in the middle, the totem pole of severed limbs, contorted bodies, lumps of claylike flesh all clotted with dried blood. Mouths caught and preserved in the grip of agony. It is the last image he remembers, although it is not his image. But the image that coaxes him into his blackout is his totem pole stark and powerful against the slate sky as he surveys his creation, triumph swirling in his chest.

He closes his eyes and finds himself awake outside Hannibal’s office.

 _Stupid,_ is what he thinks first, even before he understands what has happened. His traitorous, unconscious, stupid body, yearning for the safety of Hannibal’s presence, desiring it even in the blank expanse of his head when every other part of him has been eroded. _Stupid_.

He is shivery with panic as he paces around Hannibal’s office, rubbing his palms together to stave off the remembered cold of the beach. It had been cold, just a moment ago – so cold he had felt the air settle in his lungs like a damp weight. It’s not cold now. The weak winter sunlight is bleeding through the windows and casting everything in an unreal glow.

‘There’s something wrong with me,’ he says, his voice cracking beneath the weight of his sudden fear.

When he sits down and buries his face in his hands, he thinks for a dangerous moment he is about to cry. He has never felt this way; never so primally desperate, so raw and bloodied with fear. When he thinks of the totem pole, what he thinks of is all the hidden parts of himself – what they might look like, exposed to the light, twisted and gnarled and discoloured. His secret ugliness.

He is not sure it is much of a secret anymore.

They talk about the crime scene. About guilt, about shame. Will thinks again of the night in Hannibal’s house, lying stiff and tense, his hands twisting restlessly in the clean sheets as he tried to separate the fear of his sleepwalking episode from the arousal which had stained it. Or had the fear stained his arousal?

‘I worry about you, Will.’ Hannibal’s voice. Steady, deep, thickened very slightly around the edges by his accent. Will bristles out of instinct, although the words do not instil the same embarrassed dread that Alana’s do, or Jack’s. _Have I broken you?_

And then:

‘I think you should stay with me again.’

‘No.’

‘Will—’

‘No, Hannibal, I mean it. I appreciate the offer, I do, but I still have some dignity left, even if it doesn’t look like it.’ The edge of Will’s smile stings against the side of his face as he grits words between his teeth. ‘This feels like I’m being institutionalised.’

‘You are not being institutionalised,’ Hannibal responds calmly. ‘You’re not my patient—’

‘Not officially.’

‘Not officially my patient. We’re friends. I’m your friend, Will, and I’m trying to help.’

‘I said I want a brain scan,’ Will returns, restless with feverish agitation. ‘I know what my brain is like. I know what it does when things get... unfocused. And it’s never been like this.’

‘You’ve never been under this much pressure.’

‘I’m not leaving my house, Hannibal. Not until I know what’s wrong with me.’

Hannibal turns away from him. Will’s chest wrenches like a torn muscle; he is strung between wanting to apologise for the bark of his words, and wanting to convince Hannibal, to prove him wrong, to stop him from insinuating that Will is going mad.

‘Then let me spend the night at your home,’ Hannibal says finally.

‘What?’

‘I will rest easier knowing that you are not stumbling on unmarked roads in the dead of night. Just until this case is over. And then we can rethink about the best way to go forwards.’

A muscle in Will’s jaw jumps. He had not expected this, and he does not know how to explain the sensation of sweet and starlit anguish that had swept over him at the prospect of Hannibal in the midnight intimacy of his home.

‘My home isn’t very visitor friendly,’ he suggests, working the words in his mouth.

‘I’ve been there before. I’ve always felt very welcome.’

‘Things are different at night,’ Will responds vaguely. He doesn’t know how to word his discomfort, and it feels as if he will give it more substance by voicing it, so instead he leaves it to suffocate in his chest, a hoarse, gasping breath of unease and embarrassment.

Hannibal’s gaze bores through Will and pins him against the wall.

‘The places we live reflect parts of us – not necessarily what we are, but what we would like to be, or perhaps what we crave others to give to us. It’s a very intimate gesture, and perhaps that is why it unnerves you. But I would appreciate it.’

Will swallows thickly.

‘Is this your idea of intimacy?’ he asks finally, his voice strangled.

Hannibal smiles.

 

 

Like Will himself, Hannibal discovers Will’s house looks different in the dark.

In the light it seems oddly empty despite the insistent, crowding presence of the dogs: the furniture is all functional, shelves lined with books that can no longer offer comfort or distraction, a bed without a headboard. The only pockets of personality come from the broad brushes of outdoor life – photographs of distant, misty forests or deep lakes, fishing rods, sleek cabin wood.

In the wintry quiet of the evening, the house comes to life around Hannibal, steeped in intimate shadow.

Will looks softened and smudged by the lamplight. He stands in the doorway with a bundle of sheets and pillows in his arms, resting his chin on top of the pile, his mouth quirked tightly at one corner as if the seams have been pulled too tight.

‘I don’t have many guests,’ he says finally, as if this is a revelation.

‘I am honoured to be the exception.’

‘I’d wait until the morning before deciding if it’s an honour or not.’ Will’s expression jerks fitfully into a smile as he drops the handful of sheets onto the lounge chair. His words linger in the air after he has excused himself to his bedroom.

Hannibal folds the duvet neatly over the arm of the lounging chair and sits, elbows propped, thoughtful. Looking around the room. Imagining defiling every corner; imagining staining the underbelly of each shadow a deep and arterial red.

 

 

That night, nothing happens.

Hannibal had decided on the journey back to Will’s home that he would punish him for changing the limits of their one-sided game, even if he did enjoy the challenge of adapting to the unfamiliar territory. He had thought about what he would do and weighed up how rough he would be. But Will remains heavy and unmoving in his bed, breathing sharp and uneven through the tremors of a nightmare. Hannibal can hear him from the next room but he does not venture to look, because it is not what he wants.

In the morning, Will seems to vacillate between relief and satisfaction as he hunches over the kitchen table, elbows propped, his face washed out and bruised with a difficult sleep. Hannibal savours the painful contortions of his expression and fantasises about the way Will’s lips will part when Hannibal sinks his teeth right into his heart.

He returns to the house the second evening before Will, letting himself in, coaxing the dogs into friendly submission. By the time Will returns from Grafton, the kitchen is full of smoke and smell.

‘You’ve made yourself at home,’ Will suggests, unbuttoning his coat.

‘I feel very welcome here.’ Hannibal’s expression flickers with the hint of private amusement as he thinks of how far into Will’s house he has wandered uninvited, how much of his own design he has already twined in Will’s hidden spaces. His lure. His thoughts. And soon – soon, Hannibal repeats, mastering the momentary jump of his pulse - soon he will press his mark even further into Will until he aches within Will for good. Until he burns him the way his brain is burning him up: from the inside out.

They talk about the case over dinner. It is the perfect accompaniment to the food.

‘He destroyed his own legacy,’ Will says heavily. ‘Tore it up, root and stem, after he’d laboured over it, after he’d exposed it to the world.’

‘We often do not understand the significance of our actions until we experience their aftermath.’

‘It made me think about Garret Jacob Hobbs.’

‘How so?’

‘There is a part of me that can’t stop... toying with his memory. And somehow, this case feels as though it has brought me closer to understanding him. He did the same, didn’t he? Or tried to.’

‘Kill his own child?’

‘Yes, but – more than that, it’s more complicated than that. His entire legacy. His murders. He killed those girls so that he wouldn’t follow through on his desire to kill Abigail. His legacy is one that centres around the essential fact of her being alive. And yet, when it came down to it, he was willing to wreck all that. He was going to kill her. Until we stopped him.’

‘We preserved his legacy,’ Hannibal suggests, with the ghost of a challenge. Will’s mouth tenses.

‘She’s not his legacy anymore.’

‘Is she yours?’

Will looks violently unhappy. Hannibal can’t decide whether it is the truth of his observation, or the falsity of it, which has disarmed him.

‘I don’t want a legacy,’ Will answers finally, his voice stiff and starchy. ‘I don’t have one. There is no part of me that is solid enough for someone to build a foundation on, even if they wanted to.’

 _I will,_  Hannibal thinks with sudden savagery, his composure upending like a seesaw. _This totem pole is nothing compared to what I will forge for you_. _From you_.

What he says is: ‘You are more durable than you imagine.’

 

 

The falling snow outside the house radiates ghost-grey light through the window as Hannibal runs the edge of his thumb along the crack over the fireplace. In the unreal glow of the room, it looks like a gaping mouth. But toothless. Defenceless. A beautiful insight into the state of Will’s mind.

He considers the plaster dust coating his thumb. The residue of Will’s violence.

He has spent the day with disappointment blacking his mouth. A half-formed disappointment, at most – there is the thrill all in itself of being invited into the sanctified shelter of Will’s house, to violate his territory with the tread of Hannibal’s feet, to study Will in the throes of night-time vulnerability even if he is not laid out supplicant and unaware for Hannibal to take what he pleases. But Hannibal knows how much more he can make Will.

As if coaxed by divine purpose, the floorboards creak.

Will moves more instinctively this time, retreading a familiar path out of his bedroom and into the main area of the home. And Hannibal is there to meet him.

There is no hesitancy this time; no careful testing of the depth of Will’s sleep. Hannibal crushes his mouth against Will’s, tasting the salt of his sweat, coaxing Will’s lips apart with a practiced flick of his tongue.

Will’s eyes are half-lidded and glassy – they stare right through Hannibal as Hannibal backs Will up against the wall with a guiding insistence, his hips hard against Will’s, his hands busy and territorial as they hold Will’s limp body in place. Will shifts his mouth against Hannibal’s and drags it in a clumsy arc along the side of Hannibal’s face as Hannibal sucks sharply at the jut of his jawline, his neck, toying the shell of Will’s ear with his teeth.

He slides one hand over the thin material of Will’s shorts and bites down, hard, on the delicate curve of his ear. Will stiffens obediently with the touch and the hurt, his pain releasing through him in a damp and lust-thinned gasp.

‘Good,’ Hannibal murmurs, and slides two fingers against Will’s cock rewardingly.

He tongues the bite mark and smiles, instinctive, unexpected, as Will slurs something distracted and concerned about Abigail into Hannibal’s cheek. Perhaps their earlier conversation is still fretting the strings of Will’s brain – perhaps, later, he will dream of Abigail, after Hannibal has used him and taken him to bed, his mind fevered and strained with images of his and Abigail’s joint baptism in the violent spurt of her arterial blood. The three of them, together. Changing.

Arousal blooms lovely and potent in Hannibal’s gut.

He rattles Will against the wall again, kissing him harder, feeling him stiffen in Hannibal’s sure grasp. And then he’s leading him back towards the bedroom, towards the unsettled disarray of Will’s bed, the smell of fever and bad dreams thick in the air as the silvery light of the snowstorm outside drains the reality from the room.

Hannibal undresses quickly and methodically. Will sways and pulls his shirt over his head; his movements are languid and honeyed with sleep, his mouth slack at the corners, his eyes smudged with fog. He looks more at peace than Hannibal has ever seen him before, and it is this knowledge more than anything else that sends desire spitting like an open fire deep within him.

Will steps out of his shorts, standing naked and cold and unknowing before Hannibal.

Hannibal moves towards him again with sure purpose, pressing him down onto the bed, sucking hard and sharp at Will’s collarbone until he is certain he has discoloured the skin. He wants it, this time, wants to mark Will in a way that Hannibal will recognise, and Will cannot. Wants to taste him.

He hooks one of Will’s legs up, positioning him like roadkill. When he presses a finger against Will’s entrance he feels the tremor of sensitivity run through Will’s body – he can’t imagine what it must feel like, to have this pleasure wrenched from him, to have it bleed through into his unconsciousness.

As he thinks he touches him almost distractedly, half-preparing him, listening to the shallow breaths easing through Will’s mouth. He feels, too, the jolt of resistance that goes through Will as he sinks the first finger in and then, quickly, the second, knowing it hurts as he moves his fingers inside Will and soothes him back into compliance with a clever twist of his wrist.

Hannibal works just long enough that Will is impatient and twitchy beneath his touch, almost lurid in his arousal, and then he pulls his fingers out with a cruel swiftness. He savours the phantom burn of his touch between Will’s legs as he repositions the two of them, rucking the sheets over the mattress, Will shifting obediently beneath him, his cheeks bright with desire as Hannibal moves against him with new focus, the head of his cock teasingly brushing against Will’s entrance.

Will’s breath punches out of his chest as Hannibal presses inside him.

Hannibal had expected Will to be tight around him, but the reality is more pleasing than he had anticipated. Will makes a sound - half protest, half pleasure - as Hannibal rolls his hips and begins to work himself against Will, their skin burning with shared sensation.

Will looks half-dead and disorientated with confused pleasure beneath him, his head tipped back to expose the hollow of his throat, groaning low and deep as he moves in a facade of encouragement against Hannibal, his cock hard and leaking precum.

Hannibal exhales, short, focused. His hips grind down as he drags punishingly out of Will and slides back in. Hurting him. Rewarding him.

The room is quiet and sleepy, silent except for their heavy breaths and the slick sound of their bodies moving, the sound of desire. Hannibal murmurs low encouragement against Will’s ear with the perverse knowledge that Will can’t properly understand it, let alone react to it with any sense of performance, rolling his hips against Will’s, his teeth dragging hard and sharp across Will’s throat, his gut twisting taut with lust as he strokes a hand through Will’s sweat-damp hair.

Will shivers, shallow breaths easing between his parted lips, his eyelids flickering with half-conscious animation. Hannibal moves inside him with unforgiving drags, angling himself just right to watch the colour of surprise bloom against Will's waxen face, as if Hannibal is bringing him to life with the rhythm of his thrusts. They move in discordant rhythm, Hannibal sure and focused, Will clumsy and dazed, shifting up against Hannibal, begging, desperate.

‘Good,’ Hannibal murmurs again, for the satisfaction of hearing his own voice serrated with desire.

He fucks deeper, feeling Will tense and buck instinctively beneath him. Thinks of Will at a crime scene, nervy, anticipating, loosening his brain. He imagines him in the wake of Hobb’s death, splattered with gore, startled, dazed with violence. Imagines him during – delirious with power and purpose, his jaw tight. Glasses smudged with blood.

Thinks of them holding Abigail together, their hands slick with the clotting spray of her life.

Will studying the scathing beauty of Hannibal’s corpses. Admiring them.

Knowing them.

Hannibal grips Will tighter, holding him securely against the bed as his orgasm rocks through the two of them. Leaving his mark deep within Will. Bruising him with it.

He stays inside Will for only a moment, breathing hard, his composure momentarily slipping, and then he pulls out of him in a fluid and punishing movement. He had not expected to be so overcome by Will’s lovely, malleable potential but as he dresses he still feels rudely unbalanced by it, recalling the swamp of sensation that had muddied his brain, even as Will had laid pliant and defenceless beneath him, his body an unknown offering.

By the time he is dressed, Will has eased himself into a seated position, still out of it, his stomach sticky with his leaking cock.

Hannibal hands him his discarded clothes. A beat passes between them, their gazes interlocking in an incomprehensible rush of contact, and then Hannibal smooths his hair and leaves the bedroom with the door left open, his skeleton vibrating with the impossible violence of murdering Will in his bedroom.

He would regret it. No matter how easy it would be, he knows he would miss Will in the aftermath, miss what he could have made of him. But he wants to punish him, for disarming Hannibal like this. Needs to. His jaw might snap with the pressure.

When he returns to the living area, he looks at the empty socket of the fireplace, the shadowy huddle of the dogs.  He leaves the front door gently pushed open and waits until he hears the now-familiar weight of Will’s footsteps against the floor.

 

 

Will wakes up outside his house.

The edges of his consciousness are damped down with the smell of wet earth and the stinging cold of the snow. Everything hurts; everything feels strange and very heavy, as if he is inhabiting someone else’s body. When he rubs at his eyes and tries to focus on the outline of the trees in front of him, he has the sudden and gripping horror that he has done something very bad.

He rubs harder at his eyes and stares, hopelessly, at the sleek silhouette of the stag startle and look towards him.

 _Do you feel unstable?_ Alana had asked only the day before, her mouth soft and overripe with concern. Will stares into the distance and feels a scream swell and inflate in his chest. The stag noses amongst the underbrush, its antlers snagging on the filmy moonlight, threatening to pull everything down around it.

He’s hard again.

The reality of his arousal only sinks through his brain as he begins the stumbling walk back to his house. Will grits his teeth and tries to wish it away, his eyes closing briefly before he opens them again in a jolt of panic, and after this he bites down hard on the inside of his cheek and worries the meat between his back molars until he is safely on the porch of his house. His lower half aches. He doesn’t want to think about it.

Hannibal is fast asleep when Will inches back through the door. An intruder in his own house. He leans against the wall and listens to the sound of Hannibal’s breathing until he can mimic it himself; until his heart stops pounding like a drum through his skeleton. He’s still painfully hard, his boxers spotted with precum, his face unnaturally warm against the winter cold.

His bed has been violently disturbed in his sleep, the sheets rolled and creased, exposing the thin foam of the mattress at certain points. Will sits on the end of the bed and shivers, painfully aware of Hannibal in the next room, his cock throbbing uncomfortably with the pressure of arousal. Three of the dogs follow him curiously in.

He tries to sort through the clumsy, shapeless matter of his sleep, but there is a part of Will that does not want to confront the images that had prompted such vivid and searing pleasure within him. He feels bruised with his imagined satisfaction – he had ached on the walk back to his bed between his legs, a phantom pain, as if his fantasies are becoming more real than his waking moments.

Will stares hard at the door, as if he can see through the darkness towards where Hannibal is sleeping on the lounge chair. His chest is tight with misery.

He releases a shuddering breath and slides his palm over his cock. The touch is almost unbearable but he can’t bring himself to relax properly and so he pulls himself off in hurried, taut strokes, his shoulders bruising with tension, his eyes darting fitfully to his doorway, every jumping shadow looming to take on Hannibal’s size and silhouette.

Winston stirs and whines fretfully in the corner. Will exhales sharply, the breath hitching at the back of his throat, feeling hot and sticky with lust. He thinks of Hannibal – the clever twist of his mouth, the clean lines of his body. His hands.

 _Killing someone really feels that bad?_ Abigail’s voice asks, rising out of the gloom.

‘No,’ Will hisses, his hand slackening momentarily, the head of his cock slick with arousal, but it’s too late, he’s too close to the edge, too bruised and raw with desire already, and the shift of his hand is enough for him to buck convulsively and spill his seed all over his fingers in a blur of pleasure and anguish.

He spends the rest of the night biting down on his lip to stave off the threat of sleep, washed out by the moonlight.

 

 

‘How did you sleep last night?’ Hannibal asks the next morning, relishing the blunt force trauma of his words.

Will’s expression tenses with the weight of his confession.

‘Restlessly.’

Hannibal remains quiet, feigning regret. Allowing Will to drown in his own misery whilst he stares hard at the purpled mark against Will’s collarbone, only half-concealed by his t-shirt.

‘Maybe,’ Will starts again finally, his voice curbed with reluctance, ‘I could stay with you. Until the brain scan. I left the door open last night... anything could’ve happened to the dogs. To the house. And I can hardly keep asking you to sleep on my chair.’ He wets his lips with his tongue, unknowingly tracing over the ghosted imprints of Hannibal’s teeth against the deliberate curve of his lower lip.

When Hannibal doesn’t answer immediately, Will’s hand jumps to the blotted bruise against his collarbone.

‘It feels like someone else inhabited my body for a while. As if I peeled off, like a layer of skin. And underneath, someone else. Something else. And if this would be better for you as well…’

‘Of course.’ Hannibal’s mouth twitches with the flicker of satisfaction. ‘You’ll be my guest of honour.’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> any opportunity to put in some sweet nightmare stag imagery is always an opportunity well taken.
> 
> and things are ONLY gonna get weirder from here. i hope you enjoy.


	3. Part Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal's deceptions reach a fever-pitch. I'm not sorry about the pun.

Will’s sleep-walking episodes grow more frequent over the passing weeks.

Hannibal savours the development as if Will’s instability thicks the air between them; as if Hannibal can taste it on his tongue. In a way, he can – his house is touched with the weight of Will’s fevers, his hallways echoing with the uneven footfalls of Will’s nighttime wanderings. When Will streaks the viscera of Beth LeBeau’s death with his fingerprints, Hannibal’s mind latches on to the fantasy and holds tight; when he arranges for Will to have a MRI scan at the hospital, he angles himself so that he has a perfect view of Will stretched out with his legs bare beneath the hospital gown, his feet vulnerable and childlike, looking half-dead and half-preserved as he lies pliantly and exposes his brain to Hannibal.

The x-ray is fascinating, but it is not enough. It reveals the shell of Will’s mind – the fibre of protective tissue, the inflamed surface, the swells of colour and light – but it does not give Hannibal the experience he desires. He wants to cut Will open so badly he has to tense his shoulders to restrict the urge.

For a dangerous moment, he does not feel in control of his own desires. But it passes, as it always does. And when he convinces Sutcliffe to lie to Will, the triumph of his deception relaxes within Hannibal’s chest like an anchor suddenly loosened and plummeting below the sea level, washing him clean with the drench of its spray.

At night – the nights he does not spend with Will – Hannibal’s sleep is touched gold and hallowed with his fortune.

 

 

They still keep their regular appointment in Hannibal’s office. Will had looked uncertain at first, his mouth faltering around half-spoken words; he had suggested it was ‘unnecessary’, but Hannibal had remained firm. ‘It’s good to keep boundaries,’ he had told Will, ‘and you are staying with me as my friend, not my patient.’

Will smiles at this.

In the evening dark of his office, Hannibal flexes his jaw, scrapes the sharp of his teeth against the inside of Will’s head. But when the two of them are in Hannibal’s house – when Will drowns in the liquid dark of his unconsciousness for Hannibal to see – he bites down all the way to his back molars until the shock reverberates through his jaw. He thinks of his chin running wet with Will’s blood; thinks of licking him dry, tasting the burst juice of his murderous fantasies.

His teeth throb with phantom pressure the first time he watches Will have a seizure.

He is startled, but only briefly, enough for his eyebrows to lift with his expression as he considers Will before him. It is a short episode; Hannibal keeps count of the seconds, understanding in a rush of knowledge that he is being presented with something rare, a version of Will where he is as helpless and unaware as he is asleep but animated with half-feral emotion. This is everything Will stifles in the claustrophobic depths of his mind: the sort of manic energy that makes him almost convulse and spit as he shudders through his seizure. This is what Hannibal is making him.

He keeps this information to himself – forces himself into another room before Will comes back to himself. But he watches with private pleasure as Will stumbles half-dazed in the aftermath, his eyes fogged over, his cheeks flush with colour. A part of Will that he owns, and he alone.

Everything reminds him of Will lately. It is infuriating. It is mesmerising. Chilton sits across from Hannibal at dinner, looking rattled and impatient, and all Hannibal can think about is how clumsy Chilton had been with Abel Gideon’s brain, how uninspired his rummagings had turned out to be.

‘If force is used, the subject will only surrender temporarily. Once the patient is exposed to the method of manipulation, it becomes much less effective.’ Hannibal spears a leaf of asparagus and thinks of Will, disorientated and ignorant, his eyes a blur of filmy white. Unaware of how profoundly he has threatened Hannibal. Of how profoundly Hannibal threatens him.

‘The subject mustn’t be aware of any influence.’

Hannibal smiles around his next bite. His own private joke.

Everything is cracking and splintering around Will like a wall of ice. He has ruined three of Hannibal’s bedsheets with his sweat; he balls the sheets up and stows them away with guilty secrecy like a young child, determined to wash them when Hannibal is out of the house. He doesn’t feel clean.

 

 

‘How did you sleep?’ Hannibal asks Will each morning, the unnatural light of his eyes seeming to illuminate Will’s thoughts like an invasive scan. The mundane intimacy of the question might have ached like loss deep within Will if the question had been mundane, or if the answer has not been so exposing. As it is, Will can only duck away from the scrutiny; staring down at the eggs Hannibal has prepared for breakfast, tapping his fork idly against the side of the plate, swallowing down the new acid of embarrassment which rises within him.

‘Restlessly,’ is how Will usually responds, his mouth quirking at the edges with the painful hint of a smile, as if this is a joke the two of them are sharing.

But one morning – two days after Georgia Madchen waits for him in the deep shadows around Hannibal’s house and reaches out to brush her life against his fingertips – he hesitates.

‘I had a dream last night,’ he starts, and then stops. The words jump in the back of his mouth. They stay there for a brief spell, as Will feels the loose thread of Hannibal’s attention pull taut and defined, and his mouth moves soundlessly as if trying to shape his thoughts into being.

‘I don’t dream much, anymore,’ he adds after a moment.

Whatever sleep he does manage to get is scrambled and smeared with vivid colour; he sees strange things behind his eyelids. Calm waters agitated by rolling storms, Abigail impaled on the forking antlers of his imagined stag, Alana slowly undressing whilst her mouth pools and spills over with hot blood. All the killers he has inhabited recently, shifting just out of focus in the shadows of Hannibal’s guest room. But these visions are not dreams – they do not feel like dreams. They are shot through with electric urgency.

‘Dreams often act as symptoms,’ Hannibal tells him, his face impassive, his eyes bright with focus. ‘We can consider them indicators of larger problems, or anxieties – just as our bodies might develop fevers to flush out a toxin, so too do our brains provide us with the necessary mechanisms to flush out bad thoughts.’

‘My brain doesn’t try to flush out bad thoughts.’ Will tenses his jaw, testing it, pushing the plate away. ‘It incubates them.’

‘Perhaps that is what your brain needs. To latch onto something in order to understand it, to embrace what is happening inside of you instead of rejecting it. After the scan, it might be that your subconscious is finding a way to process the knowledge that you are suffering from a mental malady—’

‘It was just a dream.’

‘Would you like to tell me about it?’

Will stretches his legs out underneath the table, and feels bruised with exhaustion, raked through by the sharp light of the morning. He rubs at his face.

‘I don’t know.’

The dream comes back to him slowly, as if the molten dark of his nighttime fantasy is pouring slowly into the early light of Hannibal’s kitchen. He is alone by the doorway; he feels a desperate, confused urge to press himself up against the door, his chest constricted with a yearning that runs right through him like a chill – he knows something is there, just beyond the territory of Hannibal’s threshold, waiting for him, wanting him. And he wants it too.

When the door creaks open, he stands poised and breathless, the shadows swarming around him, pushing into the kitchen, settling into the figure of a hulking, horned creature, taller than a man but haphazardly shaped like one. A wendigo. Its antlers protrude in a blackened curve towards the ceiling; its dead eyes fix him with a singular intensity. A shard of silvery light follows it in and illuminates the streak of drying blood on its lips. Human blood, Will knows. As if it calls to him.

It moves, quicker than he expects – animated with the jerky restlessness of a dream. He flinches, anticipating the pinch of its antlers through his skin, the release of ruined surface. And then the cusp of its antler strokes up against the line of his face, and its own face tilts, tenderly, and Will stands helpless and fascinated as its mouth opens to his with the hot depth of a kiss.

He must make a sound, although not much of one, the strangled hitch of a suffocated gasp. The wendigo bites down sharply on his lower lip in warning and pain blossoms warm and sudden in his mouth – he exhales, again, in shock, his mouth open and supplicant against the wendigo’s, the dream-dark of Hannibal’s house warping the periphery of his vision. When the wendigo’s tongue forces his mouth further he lets it. The slick wet of it against his teeth plummets straight to his gut.

The ruined leather of its lips scratches against his chin, the drift of one clawed finger up his back sending a scorch of sensation through his skin. When he opens his eyes, struggling against the dark, the heat of its touch, the taste of dried blood in his mouth, the arc of its antlers is the only point of illumination in the room - a grotesque halo.

The dream jerks, tilts. The wendigo presses him against the wall; one long, clawed hand slides up his inner thigh, dragging a finely-shaped tear up the inside, the cusp of its palm fitting against him as its tattered mouth sucks rudely against the hollow of his jaw. Will’s gut floods with hot arousal; it stains him like pitch as he exhales a shuddering breath and presses half-desperately into the wendigo’s touch, his cock throbbing with embarrassing need.

The wendigo cups him boldly, violently, making him twitch and rock against the wall with the sudden flush of desire. When it kisses him again, it is similarly cruel, its tattered, bloody mouth bruising as it licks against his teeth and drags his breath out from his lungs. For a moment they are poised there, the two of them, Will’s chest jerking as the wendigo takes more and more of him in, the sharp jut of its ribs inflating with Will’s breath, one clawed hand pinning him to the wall, the other sliding against his waistband, dragging a claw along his length.

The room twists sharply with the weight and swell of Will’s need – they are away from the kitchen now, in the guest bedroom, Will’s bedroom, all the windows fogged with condensation, the shadows blotting and dripping across the floor. He is naked. The wendigo presses against his back, its ruined skin cold and damp, its breath rattling against the underside of his jaw as it smells him, tastes him.

The bed looks pristine: white and unsoiled, crisp and new.

The wendigo pushes him down onto the bed with brutal force: it presses his head down into the mattress, and although he can’t see it he knows its horns are curving over the two of them, a shape like a rigid wishbone ready to snap. The edge of one of its claws circles his entrance; Will presses his face further into the mattress, his skin flushed and burning with arousal, his body trembling with barely-contained desire as the wendigo touches him again, slowly, thoughtfully, as if seeing what he will do. How he will respond.

Then it slides the long curve of its claw deep inside him, so hard Will thinks he has been split in two, and the dream disintegrates into a smear of red and pain as he shouts out loud.

‘Will?’

The deliberate weight of his name in Hannibal’s mouth jolts Will back to his fevered reality. Hannibal is studying him with his familiar expression: shrewd, measured, quiet. The kitchen is clear and golden with dawn-light; his breakfast is cooling in front of him.

Will’s heart lurches unevenly in his chest, as if it has been kicked from underneath him - he feels very unwell, strange and shivery, drenched in the shadows of his shameful dream, his skin prickling with over-sharp sensation. It seems as if Hannibal will look away and Will might suddenly cease to exist.

‘I dreamt I was here, in the dark,’ he manages finally, his voice not working quite right. ‘But I wasn’t alone.’

The lovely interior of Hannibal’s house narrows towards him, threatening to swallow him whole.  


 

When Jack calls, Will waits a respectable five rings before he picks up.

‘Did I wake you?’ Jack’s familiar question; he asks it the way other people ask ‘how are you?’ when they don’t expect, or want, an honest answer.

‘No—’

‘Good. There’s been—’

‘A murder, Jack, I know. Why else would you be ringing me?’

A beat. Will savours the taste of mild, unsatisfying retaliation in his mouth.

‘It’s Gideon. He’s escaped – I think you’ll want to see the crime scene. I’ll pick you up in an hour.’

‘I’m at Hannibal’s, Jack. Remember?’

‘... Yeah. Of course. Still. An hour. Be ready.’

Will presses the receiver to his ear until the dial tone thrums through his head.

  
  


Time has stopped making sense to Will.

He dreams of murdering Abigail, murdering Georgia; wakes up shot through with arousal and adrenaline, dripping with exhilaration, wound tightly into the bedsheets some nights as if trying to restrain himself from leaving. Other times he starts awake to the firm press of Hannibal’s hands against his arms, his voice breaking through the heavy weight of Will’s sleep.

His body doesn’t feel like his own any more. There are strange bruises all over him, discoloured fingerprints, marks without a cause, inexplicable aches pressed so deep within him he thinks he will never be soothed. Great gouges of blank space in his consciousness – he draws the clock again and again and again and it is the only centrepiece, the only version of time he has any control over. He wants to crawl into the full circle he is drawing and stay there, sheltered by its crescent.

_My name is Will Graham…_

Gideon kills again. The Ripper kills again. Will watches his reflection warp and melt in the bathroom mirror at the lab and has to grit his teeth very hard to remind himself he is not still there in that police van, half-wild with bloodlust, smacking one guard’s head into pulp on the seat and carefully twining the other’s organs to the trees outside.

Will stares as his reflection blinks at him, and finds himself back in the lab, vaguely listening to Beverly, Brian and Jimmy.

He glances down at the two brutalised corpses left in Abel Gideon’s wake – their heads rummaged, their brains loosened and shredded – until his own thoughts scramble and fill with condensation, as if someone has tried to air out his bad thoughts with hot steam. Now he has seen the Ripper’s taunting directive in the mutilation of the second corpse, he can’t get away from it.

‘Hey.’ It’s Beverly; her face flickering in and out of focus as he glances at her, startled. They’re alone. Her mouth pinches together, sharpening her expression. ‘Can I ask you something?’

Will rubs hard at his face, trying to brush the cobwebs of the Ripper’s presence from inside him.

‘Would you ask me even if I said no?’

‘Probably. Yeah.’

‘Right.’

A pause, stuttering between the two of them. Will can’t figure out Beverly’s expression. She seems to be looking right through him – as if someone has cracked open his head and arranged the plates of his skull for public consumption.

‘You haven’t been going back to Virginia lately.’

‘What?’

The ceiling is dripping. Will grinds his back molars and looks hard at the latest dead body, his ears ringing with painful noise as he stares at the professional shear of the body’s shorn forearm. For a moment, just a moment, his thoughts are not in his own voice, not even in Gideon’s, but in the imagined and yet intimate familiarity of the Chesapeake Ripper’s. So close, so quiet, as if he is speaking directly in Will’s ear, his hot breath fanning against the side of Will’s face, driving thought after thought through Will’s head like lobotomy instruments.

‘You’re staying with Hannibal, right? Dr Lecter?’

Beverly slides into focus and Will’s chest jolts with a sudden rush of unexpected affection for her. It dissipates in the next second with a cloud of breath.

‘It’s just until the sleep-walking stuff gets figured out.’ He shrugs, jerking away from her eye contact. ‘It was upsetting the dogs.’

‘Okay,’ Beverly says, and smiles, her cheeks rising with the expression. ‘As long as you’re not going mad on us.’

It’s a joke he realises, too late, his own face twitching with the attempt at a laugh.

 

 

Hannibal is surprised by Will more than he cares to admit. His clever, bloodlit brain – the uneasy wonder with which he regards Hannibal’s corpses – the way he sinks into his unconsciousness with a rapturous, freefalling intensity – the lovely shapes his mouth makes as Hannibal moves him. But nothing surprises him as much as opening the door to the waft of a winter chill and Abel Gideon standing on his doorstep, held in place by the barrel of Will’s gun.

Will has brought him a beautiful gift; Hannibal’s pretender, stunned and at his mercy. As if Will knows Hannibal’s truth – as if he has known it all along, the first time he sat alone by himself and breathed quietly and sunk into the depths of the Ripper’s brain. If a thought could unnerve Hannibal, this one might. As it is, Hannibal’s delight is undiluted.

But, of course, the real gift isn’t Gideon at all. It is Will. Gravitating towards Hannibal as if his desire is now muscle memory, his face wet with damp and moonlight.

‘I’m having a hard time thinking,’ Will says, once they are inside. ‘I feel like I’m losing my mind. I don’t know what’s real.’

Hannibal twists his mouth in a flicker of sympathy; he is trying to suppress a smile. When he moves, it is with deliberate slowness – he begins to recite the mantra he has pressed punishingly into the depths of Will’s brain, carefully averting his eyes so that all he sees of Will’s growing agitation is the flicker of movement in the periphery of his vision, the quiet hum of surging distress. It is obscene in its rude beauty. Hannibal doesn’t want to mar it by staring too openly, so he looks down and recites the time.

‘I don’t care who I am!’ Will’s interruption cracks the quiet of Hannibal’s home with a solid force – he looks frantic for a moment, eyes wild like a kicked dog, and Hannibal knows it has all been worth it to see Will like this, his brain frayed and pulling apart at the seams.

Will takes in a shuddering breath.

‘Just tell me... if he’s real.’

He aims the gun at Gideon. Hannibal’s eyes brighten with new curiosity as he takes in the scene; Will on the verge of a seizure, shivering, unwell, his brain boiling and steaming inside his skull; Gideon motionless, unsure. A rush of power sweeps through Hannibal.

‘Who do you see, Will?’

‘Garret Jacob Hobbs.’ Will’s voice dips whispery with fear. ‘Who do you see?’

‘I don’t see anyone.’

The answer has its desired effect. Will whines a little like a scared animal, his expression faltering as if he has been winded. For a second, Hannibal thinks he is going to cry, and arousal licks low and insistent deep within his gut at the prospect, heightening the wet depth of Will’s pleas. _Please don’t lie to me_....

‘Garret Jacob Hobbs is dead. You killed him,’ Hannibal continues smoothly, relentlessly, talking through the thin sounds of Will’s panic. ‘You watched him die.’

‘What’s happening to me?’ Will breathes out, his face gleaming with sweat, his eyes overbright with the threat of tears. Hannibal regrets the next moment as Will runs his hand over his face, trying to scrub away the grit of his exhaustion, baring his teeth like a rabid animal as Hannibal positions himself closer, talks soothingly over him; lies in wait.

And then Will’s hand falls limply away from his face; his eyes roll into the back of his head, revealing a sliver of unsettling white; he looks almost as he does when sleep-walking, except there is no preternatural calm making him look young and boyish. Instead he is trembling and shaking through the beginning of a seizure, rigid with it, his face bruised and hollowed as he sways in place.

Hannibal spares a contemptuous glance towards Gideon. Irritated at his presence.

He places a hand at either side of Will’s face, holding him steady as he studies Will’s unconsciousness, his lips parted in thought. Will’s face burns damp against Hannibal’s palms. He stills a little at the touch, as if calmed by Hannibal’s presence.

Hannibal dispatches Gideon quickly and swiftly, not caring to spend much time picking over Gideon’s plagiarism. He spares a brief thought for Alana, sequestered in her safehouse, sweet and unsuspecting, just as unknowing as Will. And just like that, everything else is pushed firmly from Hannibal’s mind. It is all for Will, this entire night: his punishment and his reward.

Will makes a stifled, abortive sound of struggle, and Hannibal knows instinctively what he will do.

His hands are quick at Will’s waist, unbuckling his belt, sweeping his touch over Will as he loosens the collar of his own shirt with his spare hand. Will trembles and shudders; his mouth contorts into a frantic shape, all teeth and spit. Hannibal hums in quiet approval and pulls Will’s trousers down, feeling the fever-heat radiate off his skin as Hannibal undresses him as little as possible, unzipping his trousers with uncharacteristic impatience. There is not much time; there never is. But there is enough.

Hannibal sinks to his knees in one fluid, reverential motion. Above him, Will stares sightless and stunned, his body jerking unnaturally; he is very beautiful like this, so ruined, so unpredictable, made this way because Hannibal wants him like this. This is Hannibal’s design. And Will has followed his unspoken directives so beautifully.

Hannibal pulls Will’s cock from his underwear and touches him curiously, gently, running his thumb along Will’s length as if he is testing the cool edge of a knife blade. When he presses his lips to the tip in a chaste kiss, it is difficult to know whether the swell in his gut is arousal or triumph.

His first taste of Will is all heat and salt; he dips his head slowly, as if conducting a weighted ritual, listening to the guttural wet of Will’s sounds as he hollows his cheeks and takes him in further.

It feels as if he is taking something from Will even as he gives him something. Even as Will stiffens into full hardness in Hannibal’s mouth; even as Hannibal’s lips grow wet and slick with his work. One hand circles the base of Will’s cock as the other keeps Hannibal balanced against the floor – he thinks of shearing the top of Will’s skull off and dipping his feet into the bloodied steam of his thoughts. He wonders whether Will takes pleasure in his unconsciousness, if he will take pleasure in it now Hannibal has coloured it with the promise of his release.

It will have to end after tonight – it will have to change. But this thought doesn’t trouble Hannibal.

He presses the flat of his tongue against the underside of Will's cock; tastes him with a visceral smear of pleasure; and knows that he will not murder Will. Not yet. He would make a beautiful corpse - skin waxen and purpled, mouth trapped in a slack exhale, arranged however Hannibal liked him. But he looks just as lovely now, just as helpless, just as Hannibal has arranged him, and he's still warm and restless with agitated potential.

As a perverse reward, Hannibal drags his tongue against Will; grazes the sharp of his teeth along him, making quiet, wet noises with his mouth until his jaw bruises with the effort.

And then Will takes in a breath - a proper breath, not one made filmy and uneven with his seizure - and the languid stretch of Hannibal’s pleasure snaps violently within him.

He moves quickly, purposefully, taking advantage of Will’s disorientated attempts at focusing to dress him again as best he can. Will’s erection is a stark outline against the material of his trousers; Hannibal’s chin is still wet with his efforts, the inside of his mouth smeared with Will’s taste.

Will’s mouth slackens around shapeless words as he struggles back into full consciousness. Hannibal bites the side of his tongue to compose himself as he sorts through excuses, tactics, distractions; as he pantomimes concern, moving towards Will instead of away in a show of bluff.

‘Will? Can you hear me?’

A muscle in Will’s jaw jumps like a pulse. He starts to speak, his voice rasping against his throat, his eyes overbright and flooded with moonlight as he stares at Hannibal.

‘You had a seizure,’ Hannibal says in the same, brisk tone, moving forward to press his hands once more to the sides of Will’s face. Will jerks back, but not properly; Hannibal is able to close the gap, to feel the tremors of his confusion vibrate against his palms.

‘You were--’ Will struggles openly, still sodden with fever. ‘Why were you--?’ He seems to realise himself after a moment, the waxen damp of his face flushing with momentary humiliation as his chin dips down.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Hannibal says with a cruel gentleness. ‘You’re confused - sit down.’

But Will recoils, as much as he can manage, his movements spiked with frustration.

‘I saw you. I - I felt you-’

‘You thought Garret Jacob Hobbs was in the room with you too, Will, you’re not well-’

‘I’m not mad.’

‘I never said that.’

‘I know what I saw,’ Will says, his jaw trembling. ‘I saw Hobbs, I heard him - and I saw you too--’

‘It’s common to try and latch on to your only point of stability to explain your fear--’

‘Stop it!’ Will rubs at his eyes, stumbles a little in place. Hannibal directs him towards the nearest seat and quiets the uncharacteristic flicker of his pulse by treating Will with a punishing tenderness, sweeping back his hair from his face, frowning in concern down at him. Will’s eyes are shut very tightly; as if he wishes he were still asleep.

‘You were on your knees,’ Will says, as if there has been no interruption, his voice streaking the syllables out of shape. ‘I felt you - I felt your breath on me - I thought - I-’

‘Come now, Will.’ Hannibal’s tone is chiding, faintly reproachful. ‘Don’t let yourself be swallowed by your delusions. You have to be aware of how you are sounding.’

‘Don’t lie to me.’ The words, again, Will’s lovely begging words from before, but no _please_ to twist low and hot in Hannibal’s gut, just the gleam of furious tears smearing Will’s eyes out of focus. His voice cracks hard and thin on the last syllable.

Hannibal’s jaw tenses, his expression sharpening.

‘We can talk about this later, Will, if you still feel the need, but right now I’m worried about Alana. Abel Gideon is still on the loose.’

This gamble pays off. Will jolts as if Hannibal has given him an electric shock; he mutters Alana’s name, looking confused and flustered, and that is all Hannibal needs, one tiny fracture in Will’s anger, just enough to coax a fatal fissure in his stability.

‘I’m calling Jack to take you to the hospital. Stay here.’

He shrugs his coat on; leaves the gun purposely in plain sight. When he rounds the corner of the room, he closes his eyes, concentrates very hard on pulling the threads of his composure tightly back together. He has been careless tonight - too pleased with his own cleverness, too pleased with Will Graham. But it will have to end.

Will has disappeared by the time Hannibal returns to the dining table. Hannibal’s mouth tenses with the ghost of a smile; he feels almost in control again as he unbuttons his coat.

  
  


Will’s face burns with the cold. There is snow everywhere - hard, slick clumps of it, making it hard to walk in a straight line as he ploughs determinedly towards Hobbs. He imagines he can see Alana through the half-drawn curtains of her house - imagines her bloodied and riddled with bullets, her skin tasting of metallic residue, her sad eyes wide and startled even as she continues to move along the room. Everything is streaked through with confused colour, the unnatural light radiating from the snow damping his surroundings in blue chill.

Hobbs aims at the window and shoots, splintering the glass into powder.

When Will shoots Hobbs in the chest, all of his perforations flood back into violent life - all of Will’s frantic, clumsy bullets, puncturing him again and again, soiling the snow in clots of arterial gore. The winter blue rises with red steam. In the periphery of his vision, Alana stands stunned and shellshocked, framed by the shattered hole of the window, but he does not notice her. In the distance, Will can see the wendigo striding towards him, its dark silhouette the only thing untouched by feverish colour. HIs thumb jumps on the trigger, his mouth slackening, his vision blurring as if everything has melted with the heat of Hobb’s second death.

The wendigo stills; flickers, as if agitated by electric impulses. When it lifts its chin to meet his gaze, it is wearing Hannibal’s face.  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for how disastrously long this has taken, but hopefully the weirdness makes up for it <3


End file.
